


this machine will not communicate

by maggietenobar



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (which grantaire is not dealing well with), (which in this case worsens later in life), (will probably come up more in later chapters), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autistic Character, Dyslexia, Learning Disabilities, M/M, Mediocre Grantaire Week, Miscommunication, Multi, Polyamory, autistic combeferre, dyslexic grantaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggietenobar/pseuds/maggietenobar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire's undiagnosed dyslexia is a growing problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this machine will not communicate

**Author's Note:**

> based largely on my own experience of the weird life that is being an english major who can barely read half the time. it's a special sort of hell. 
> 
> title is from radiohead's street spirit

The book hit the wall with a thud. Grantaire apologized to it immediately, though in a begrudging sort of way. It wasn't the book's fault, he knew, that the letters printed upon its pages would not sit still and that the words blended together. Everything seemed to be ending. His whole life was books and words and if he couldn't read, what could he do?

  
Clearly, his readings just were not happening tonight. Again. He hadn't even been able to manage half his reading for Romanticism last week and now it was the night before and he had almost nothing done once again. He was so lazy, he knew it would be hard, but he had waited until the last minute. Again.

 

Grantaire sat in class the next day, in the back as he had been this semester. He used to always sit dead center, not in the back so he looked slackish, but not in the front so he could draw. This semester he was intimidated from the beginning, his first three hundred level class and he was only a sophomore. It shouldn't have been so intimidating, he knew his mentor, Professor Hank Haverdson, had recommended him highly for this class. It was just introductory literary theory, it shouldn't be this hard. But the class had required readings to be done prior to the first week, and try as he might, he just couldn't get through the 41 pages of introduction, the second chapter of Plato's Republic and two excerpts of Horace. So Grantaire had slipped into the back row that first day after reading Wikipedia articles about Plato and Horace. Wikipedia was not enough. While he knew Plato was arguing for censorship, he didn't know what his reasoning was and would have been useless in this discussion, even if he had given half a crap about the subject. Which he definitely didn't. Enjolras would have, would have argued himself red, but then again Enjolras would have actually read the assignment. Grantaire was not Enjolras. Not for the first time, he thanked all the gods he didn't believe in that Enjolras was asexual, because if Combeferre could be getting sex from his other boyfriend there was no reason for him to date Grantaire as well.

  
Class started, and Grantaire couldn't bring himself to bother taking notes. Everything was so over his head, something about poststructuralism and a guy named Derrida and why the ever loving fuck was the professor pluralizing "knowledge"? He had no idea what was important so he didn't know what to write down. Instead he flipped open his sketchbook and began shading the lips on an obscene but ill-proportioned drawing of Combeferre.

  
After class he packed his things quickly, but Professor Stevens must not have bothered even to do that because he reached Grantaire before Grantaire reached the door.  
"We need to talk. Can you stop by my office sometime this week?"

  
Grantaire's throat went dry. "Can't. Busy," he managed to get out and began to step around his professor.

  
"If my office hours don't suit you, I'm willing to-"

  
"Can't," Grantaire said again, cutting his professor off and hurrying out the door.

  
Grantaire was practically running by the time he got out of the building; his smoker's lungs couldn't very well keep this up for long, but he didn't stop until reached his dorm and was safely inside.

 

Grantaire curled up on his bed, fighting desperately to quell the panic climbing from his stomach to chest. He always got like this when he disappointed someone, panic clawing its way out his throat until he nearly soffocated and usually threw up. He fumbled for his phone, dialed Combeferre, and didn't even realize what he was doing until it began to ring. He knew there wasn't time for any relief Combeferre could provide as he had a class in thirty minutes and Combeferre was never, ever late to class. He knew this, but did not hang up, and honestly what kind of pathetic lump calls their boyfriend-who's-really-more-of-a-fuckbuddy for Not Sex? Whatever kind he was, he did not have time to decide bc Combeferre's steady voice was filling his ear, though it was barely above a whisper.

"Hold on. Library. Leaving."

Grantaire started to protest, that Combeferre didn't need to leave for him, but he was honestly to exhausted to argue. So he hung up.

A minute later his phone rang, and of fucking course it was Combeferre's number that came up. Grantaire did not want to answer, not in a million years, but Combeferre was nothing if not persistant and Grantaire knew he would just keep calling until he picked up, so he did it now to get it over with.

"Hey, what's up?" Combeferr's voice was calm.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. You never call me, you hate phones you told me as soon as we exchanged numbers 'text don't call, if you call I won't answer and probably throw up on my phone'."

"I just- I don't know. I think I need to drop out."

"Woah, what? Don't do that. Not yet at least. I'm coming over. You're at you're dorm, right?"

"Yeah."

"See you in five."

 

Four minutes and fourty-three seconds later, Grantaire opened his door to a rather breathless Combeferre, and christ, did windswept look good on him.

"What's happened?" he said, pushing past Gantaire, dumping his bag on the floor, and sitting on the bed.

Grantaire joined him, and told him. Told him everything. Not just about class that day, but how he'd been falling behind since the first day. He told him how ever since he'd started uni, reading hadn't been easy like it had in high school. How for most of his lit classes he read monkeynotes and maybe skimmed the selection, bullshiting his way through discussions and essays. How he'd basically been lying to Hank, who always said he had so much potential, how Grantaire had accepted advance placement into Lit Theory because he didn't want to disappoint him.

"Where's your book?" Combeferre said simply when he finished.

"Why?"

"I'm going to read to you so you'll be prepared next week and maybe you'll get your professor off your back."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know, but you're my boyfriend, so I'm going to anyway."

"Fuckbuddy," Grantaire mumbled under his breath.

Combeferre either didn't hear or chose to ignore him, and Grantaire heaved himself off his bed, and grabbed his book out of the bag on the floor, along with his syllabus that listed his assignments. "We're doing sexuality and queer theory next week."

Combeferre looked at the list and flipped through the heavy anthology. "Okay, so Foucault's History of Sexuality; this extract is from part two, The Repressive Hypothesis, which sounds like a barrel of laughs."

Grantaire snorted and Combeferre began to read. "Chapter 1, The Incitement to Discourse, The seventeenth century, then, was an age of repression emblematic of what we call the bourgeois societies, an age which perhaps we still have not completely left behind."

"This isn't going to work, I understood none of that."

"Sure it will. Basically he's saying that in the sixteen hundreds the middle and upper classes deemed it unacceptable to talk about sex, and so society became sexually repressed."

"What's the point of this, it's not just that I can't read, I'm too dense to understand anything even when you read it to me," Grantaire sighed, flopping back onto his pillow. "And don't you have class soon?"

"It's not an ideal solution, but it's the best we have right now. And yeah, class is in five minutes, if I left now I'd only be a little late, but I'm not leaving, I'm staying here, because you are more important."


End file.
